Omnis Studio Reviews

Summary: Brilliant development environment, allows for deployment of the one codebase across multiple platforms.

Positive: Omnis Studio is a rapid application development environment. The biggest attribute is "rapid" - you can create complex applications quickly using this system. The IDE has evolved over time, each iteration is even easier to use.

We love the connection options: major databases? Check. Windows automation? Check. Applescript? Check. NodeJS modules? Check. This system can be the bridge to span multiple systems seamlessly.

Cross platform is a huge advantage: deploy on Mac, Windows, Linux servers, iOS and Android, plus the web. We develop apps that have desktop versions, which integrate with mobile apps and web forms - a powerful combination.

Negative: The development paradigm is a little different to other IDEs, so there can be a steep learning curve. However, once over that it does work consistently and reliably.

Earlier versions of Omnis were available for Linux desktop. Current versions of Omnis for Linux are designed to run as services for the web client, but we still have Linux desktop users - it would be good to have a current version to provide them with an upgrade path.

Summary: For a company who can afford it, and who can afford to pay to train developers in it, Omnis is a no brainer. For business like applications that is. If your needs are complex and you are going it alone for your company for a long term mission critical application, Omnis is a great choice. It has one not so well advertised email distribution developers support group that makes developing in Omnis much more realistic due to the help you can get on that list. Quality help. You can learn the basics of Omnis pretty easily and quickly. Soon you will be developing your applications structure, forms or windows, other objects, the interface, and slowly the code too. Soon you'll make reports that output your data various ways including to PDF. Omnis is a luxury tool, that has a price. And there are few developers in it. If you can get past those two things, then it's a super fine choice.

Positive: If your app is data bound, a database of some sort, then Omnis Studio is the luxury language to learn and use. With it, you can make database apps deployed on computers and laptops but also tablets and smart phones as well. Omnis provides a highly integrated tool because they potentially control the language, the interface, the connection to the database, all reporting, connectivity, extensions, everything. You work in one language, throughout, as it has it's own server as well, which you use to deploy your application to any number of users. You can develop on Macintosh or Windows, it has a highly integrated IDE native on both. Omnis has pretty much everything you need in the business world today. Just one example out of the whole stack is that you can easily do REST to contact API's on the web and process the results.

Negative: You have to get past the pricing. Omnis has a cost. It's costs to develop in it, and it costs to deploy it. These can be one time, or long time lasting investments. Say every ten years you have to buy the latest upgrade. Then there's the issue of few developers in this language. But that's it. Otherwise everything is very good in Omnis land.

Summary: I am an IT Consultant writing software for many different solutions, environments, and this is my goto development environment to provide a quick to production solution.
The speed I can get to a working solution using this environment far surpasses even experts users using other tools using environments they are familiar with.
I can say this whilst working with a systems integration company, they specifically said this to me.
The Android and iOS solution now makes those phone environments easily available to me.

Positive: This is my goto development environment to provide a quick to production solution.
If required, additional functionality can be added to the core dev environment by writing externals, which I have done using C++.
When the Android and iOS options came along, I was surprised at how easy it was to get a solution written and working on the devices it was installed on, and how the app worked similarly on all devices.

Negative: I have used this for many years, and wondered why many other developers had not found this amazing solution...

Summary: I have been using this software for 25 years. I can't think of any other cross platform software (Windows / macOS) which has this proven stability and continuity. Outstanding support as well.

Positive: True cross platform development and deployment. Rich interface. Objected oriented development whether you use mobile or desktop apps or REST api's.

Negative: Too few developers discovered this smart way of app development.